Wednesday, November 22, 2006
The UN and the Credibility of Tom Lantos   Anne Bayefsky
On Tuesday, November 21, 2006 the New York Times called the "reformed" UN Human Rights Council "a discredit to the United Nations" and commented "...the Human Rights Council [was] born earlier this year of a weak-kneed compromise from which the United States stood honorably apart."

Monday, November 20, 2006
Why John Bolton deserves to be US-UN Ambassador   Anne Bayefsky
On November 17, 2006 the UN General Assembly "reconvened" its "Tenth" Emergency Session to condemn Israel. The Tenth Session began in 1997and has now been reconvened 14 times. No other emergency session of the General Assembly has occurred on any other subject in these ten years - not even on Darfur, Sudan with 2.5 million people displaced and over 400,000 dead. And once again, the General Assembly adopted another resolution condemning Israel without mentioning Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran or Syria, which are openly acting to bring about Israel's annihilation. Just seven of the UN member states voted against the resolution – the United States, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, and Palau. The European Union voted in favor.

Tuesday, November 14, 2006
THE UN AND THE ALLIANCE AGAINST CIVILIZATION   Anne Bayefsky
In a direct challenge to free societies everywhere, a report from the UN-sponsored Alliance of Civilizations (an oxymoron if there ever was one) was released this week. What do the members of the "high level group" who drafted the report, such as former Iranian President Khatami, have to say about the needs of civilization? Khatami's expertise on the subject presumably comes from his reign as president of the leading state sponsor of terrorism. His personal presidential experience, for instance, includes the pursuit of nuclear weapons, the biggest crackdown on the Iranian media since the Iranian revolution, and rounding up and imprisoning Jews on trumped-up charges of spying.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the report's recommendations begin with the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" and the claim that this is the leading situation on earth today that "colors cross-cultural and political relations among...faiths." And why the conflict? "Israel's continuing occupation of Palestinian and other Arab territories and the unresolved status of Jerusalem...are primary causes of resentment and anger in the Muslim world toward Western nations." Not, mind you, the rejection of the mere existence of a Jewish state by its Muslim and Arab neighbors for over half a century. In other words, their recipe for improving cross-cultural and political relations is to fix the Jewish problem.

Another day, another UN report, irrelevant for anyone seriously interested in tolerance and co-existence.

Thursday, November 09, 2006
Setting the stage for annihilation - courtesy of the UN   Anne Bayefsky
On November 7, 2006 Iran, the sponsor of the terrorist organization Hezbollah and its recent war against Israel, said the following in a public session at UN New York Headquarters: "The Israeli government is behaving like a savage animal." He added that Israel had no right to exist: "the history of Israel has always been suffering from a lack of legitimacy." No one in the room stopped him; the UN rules of order saw nothing wrong with this kind of language - regardless of the equality of member states, the UN Charter, or the ashes of Holocaust victims upon which it stands.

The Iranian verbiage is not random. On November 8, 2006 Hamas spokesperson Ghazi Hamad, said: "Israel should be wiped from the face of the Earth. It is an animal state that recognises no human worth. It is a cancer that should be eradicated."

Analogizing Jews to vermin was a hallmark of Nazi Germany. Today it marks the halls of the UN.